[Manchester—Wednesday, 6 August 1879]
We drove August 6th to see Miss Phelps. We were wrapped in a close fog all day but his enjoyment of the green woods and the sea breeze were beautiful to see. Ay me! Ay me! Woods may decay and fall but such a life I dare not think of ceasing from the earth. He is a joy and grace in his age quite as much as in his youth.
The world is beautiful to him and his children are tenderness and devotion itself. Seeing the Portland steamer pass the other night on which Edith was to be with her husband “think of a part of yourself, he said, being on that moving speck.”
